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An Interactive history of the Arab - Israeli conflict (Brief)
What is the conflict about?
Both sides claim land in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Moderates suggest splitting the territory while extremists want it all. There have been three major Arab-Israeli wars since 1947 when the UN proposed dividing the former British mandate of Palestine between its Jewish and Arab populations with Jerusalem as an “international” city (the Arabs rejected the plan). During each war Israel has extended its boundaries. After the second war - in 1967 - Israel took the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt and began an illegal programme of settlement building in the now occupied territories.
Significantly these were areas that Palestinian refugees had fled to in 1948. The 1967 war had defended Israel against combined Arab armies massed on its borders when its existence appeared to be under threat, but also put a significant Arab population under Israeli rule (in addition to its own Arab citizens). Its rage was demonstrated in the 1980s intifada against Israeli occupation and continues to feed into the violence. Much of the economic life of the West Bank and Gaza has been suspended since September 2000, exacerbating unemployment and poverty as many Palestinians are prevented from going to their jobs in Israel.
The conflict has developed its own logic of hate and anger that perpetuates the killing. On the Israeli side many fear the Palestinians want to drive them into the sea. Many Palestinians feel besieged by Israel and fear the Jewish state will, if not annex the West Bank and Gaza, deny the right of an economically and politically viable Palestinian state to exist.
How did the present situation develop?
The Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 after peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel broke down over the future status of Jerusalem. But what started as rioting in the aftermath of a visit by Mr Sharon, then the opposition leader, to a contested religious site, soon spiralled into killing that has to date claimed more than 2,500 lives - the vast majority on the Palestinian side.
The months before Israel’s first military incursion to the West Bank had seen an increasing use of suicide attacks by militant Palestinian groups such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the al-Aqsa brigades. For its part Israel used helicopter gunships to assassinate militant leaders, put its tanks and armoured bulldozers in Palestinian towns and raided refugee camps. Civilians died on both sides.
Operation Defensive Shield - as the campaign was called - then began on March 29 with a stated aim to dismantle the “terrorist infrastructure” in the Palestinian territories through the confinement of Mr Arafat to the basement of his Ramallah headquaters and the occupation of the other major Palestinian towns. Thousands of Palestinian men were arrested as the Israeli army hunted down - Palestinians allege summarily executed - militant fighters and Mr Arafat’s policemen.
Six weeks later the Israeli army pulled out, only to re-enter and begin its second incursion within a month.
What is the solution?
Few believe there is a military solution to the crisis because defeating the Palestinian militant groups will not mean an end to terrorist activity, and may even put more young people on the path to becoming suicide bombers. If there is an answer it will have to be political, most probably the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
This is not an especially controversial idea: both Mr Sharon and Mr Arafat have supported it (though there are critics of both men who say they want the ultimate elimination of each other’s state). But peace talks and negotiations have to deal with issues such as the status of the Jewish settlements outside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, the rights of the Palestinian refugees, who controls which areas of Jerusalem and exactly how much territory Israel cedes to the Palestinians.
Can the peace process recover?
Palestinian and Israeli officials have met since the current cycle of violence began in September 2000 but have not brokered a lasting ceasefire. The problem is getting to the situation where peace can develop - Israel demands an end to all Palestinian violence before talks can begin but the militant groups appear to reject a negotiated settlement. Suicide attacks frequently coincide with outside attempts to bring peace to the region.
An alternative - largely supported by Arab governments - is the early establishment of a Palestinian state with more detailed negotiations to follow. In ending the 35-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (a major cause of the intifada) it is hoped that support for the extremists would diminish. King Abdullah of Jordan said in May that negotiations had to give the Israelis and Palestinians “what they want in their hearts” - a Palestinian state and security for Israel in the Middle East - in order to succeed.
The last peace process began in 1993 with secret negotiations between Mr Arafat (then the exiled head of the PLO) and the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated by a rightwing Jewish fanatic. It continued in the 1990s - and right up to January 2001 - despite suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and, in its latter months, the beginning of the intifada. But critics of this gradualist approach, which envisages a step-by-step progress to a Palestinian state, point out it is vulnerable to being derailed by extremists. King Abdullah described it as “a peace process in which the process has been long and the peace never arrived.”
Is peace possible with Mr Sharon and Mr Arafat in charge?
There is animosity between the two and Mr Sharon would probably rather not deal with Mr Arafat. He calls him a “murderer and a pathological liar” and, as Israel’s minister of defence, led a campaign into Lebanon in 1982 to drive the PLO out of Beirut. Mr Arafat was allowed to flee to Tunisia but Mr Sharon said last year he wished he had “liquidated” the Palestinian leader when he had the chance.
On the Palestinian side, Mr Sharon is regarded as a war criminal for his part in the massacre by his Lebanese Christian militia allies of between 800 and 1,000 people, including many children, in two refugee camps. Mr Arafat says the Israeli prime minister does not want peace. The EU’s foreign policy head, Javier Solana, said it would be better if both men stood down saying “Sharon and Arafat have lived through this conflict for too long”.
But the animosity between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government goes further than the two leaders. Palestinian ministers have said that the true purpose of Israel’s military campaigns is to destroy the Palestinian leadership and replace it with one more to its liking. Israel routinely blames Mr Arafat for suicide bombings and says he is not doing enough to arrest the militants.
What is the international community doing?
The EU and US both played a role in ending the Bethlehem siege and securing the release of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, from his Ramallah compound. British and US wardens monitor the imprisonment of surrendered Palestinian militants and the 13 Bethlehem fighters are now in exile in the EU.
But it is Washington that holds the greatest sway over Israel and many in the region look to the US for a lead in the peace process. The US president, George Bush, revealed his plans in June for a two-state (Israeli and Palestinian) solution to the conflict to follow a reform of Palestinian institutions, establishment of a western-style democracy and election of a leader “not compromised by terror”. This was widely understood to signal the Bush administration’s refusal to deal with Mr Arafat, leading to a high profile split between the US and EU governments on the issue.
- Simon Jeffery
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